Family Politics

Many in my family, at least on my paternal grandmother’s side, adored and supported George McGovern. One of her sisters even went to the 1972 Democratic Convention in San Francisco. She was a hardcore leftist and proud atheist.

The children worshipped their mother, my great-grandmother, who was a staunch Democrat. She imparted this and Methodism to her children, at least to three of the girls and this was passed on to further generations. Being from South Dakota also meant a certain devotion for George McGovern, one of their senators.

Mom’s mother was a Republican and she made her husband one, too. That tradition continued when Mom married my father. I, however, am neither Democrat nor Republican. Both major parties are pretty much worthless, in my opinion. But the history fascinates me. Why did people support Nixon and not McGovern?

Sounds like a great guy and a wonderful professor

Bill McGuire is emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London and an advisor to the British government. He is the author of the book Hothouse Earth.

#dontdodrugs

“55 years & counting!”

Mom put this on Facebook. “55 years & counting!”

Thursday, April 1, 1976

Forty-eight years ago, on April 1, 1976, Grandpa died. I was two years old at the time. Mom reminded us while I was visiting a week ago.

Immigrants from Germany at Ellis Island in 1900

Lincoln and the Fight for Peace

“As the tide of the Civil War turned in the spring of 1865, Abraham Lincoln took a dangerous two-week trip to visit the troops on the front lines accompanied by his young son, seeing combat up close, meeting liberated slaves in the ruins of Richmond, and comforting wounded Union and Confederate soldiers.”

Did my ancestor James Boal have a twin brother?

James and David share a birthday, St. Patrick’s Day 1764. Both left Northern Ireland for America, settling in central Pennsylvania.

The most violent group of people who ever lived?

The horse-riding Yamnaya used their huge height and muscular builds to brutally murder and invade their way across Europe more than four thousand years ago. They had nutritionally rich diets and were tall, muscular, and skilled horse riders. It is believed they exploited a continent recovering from disease and death. They spread rapidly, adapting, and massacring their way throughout Europe, slaughtering Neolithic men in a prehistoric genocide. They made their way to Britain and within a few generations. No genetic record remains of the previous inhabitants who built Stonehenge.

‘A common fallacy when writing about the past’

“In literary and historical analysis, presentism is a term for the introduction of present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Some modern historians seek to avoid presentism in their work because they consider it a form of cultural bias, and believe it creates a distorted understanding of their subject matter. The practice of presentism is regarded by some as a common fallacy when writing about the past.”